All the World's A Stage
by Anera527
Summary: Rose's travels to alternate universes were- interesting, to say the least.


"_**All the World's A Stage"**_

A/N: I dunno how to label this—crack, I suppose, you really can't take this story seriously—but the idea hit me one night while watching the RSC production of 'Richard II' and I couldn't let it alone. The idea's just so out there I couldn't help but share it with everyone else. x)

Please, though, _don't_ take this seriously.

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The Tardis was just as beautiful and strange as it had been since Rose had seen it last—now close to three years—but definitely much more crowded. So many people filled the old quiet space: her mother Jackie, Mickey, Jack, Sarah Jane. And then there was the companions that had come after her—Martha Jones, someone Rose could easily admire since watching the young black doctor's handling of Davros. And then there was Donna Noble, redheaded and feisty, the most important woman in the whole universe. The woman who had saved all of creation—both of this universe and of others.

And then there was the Doctor himself—both of him. The Time Lord Doctor, the one she had fallen in love with. Then there was the apparently human Doctor, the Metacrisis created between the Doctor and Donna.

Different Doctors. Sharing the same face.

Rose couldn't help her curiosity. The dimension cannon that she had built had shown her too much.

She waited until there was a relatively quiet moment before she approached the Time Lord Doctor's side. He noticed her coming of course, and his usual wide manic smile warmed her like the sun couldn't.

"Not a bad job of saving the universe, eh, Rose Tyler?"

She smiled and bumped a shoulder lightly onto his arm, leaning on the console of the Tardis. "Pretty close call there for a mo'."

"Nah—had closer calls before." He didn't admit just how close they had come to losing all of creation—which just showed her how shaken he still was over it. She didn't think he had ever felt so helpless than in that moment on the Crucible, watching the Reality Bomb tick its way down to zero. She didn't mention it.

He looked her up and down. 'Something the matter?"

Rose shook her head, wondering what she could say.

"Rose, I was curious—" He was toggling with a switch on the console, then looked back up at her. "You had mentioned that Dimension Cannon of yours. Before you found this universe, how many did you find yourself in?"

She was relieved, in a way, that he had started the conversation before she did. "196," she replied quietly. "Some were terrible places. Others were—wonderful. Some were ending, others were just beginning. Then there were others…" She paused, before brushing her hair behind her ear and looking at him again. "Doctor, I was wondering…"

He raised his eyebrows in that wonderful Doctorish way. "You're always wondering about something, you humans. What about?"

Rose hesitated, wondering how—or even 'if'—she should tell him. 'Doctor, there were some universes… well, they were different. Suppose—ah, just suppose that almost every individual dimension has another 'you', yeah. But that 'you' has a different name, a different life, each time. And suppose that while traveling between these dimensions you meet those other 'yous'."

The Doctor's brow rose farther, curiously, urging her on when she hesitated. "I'm following. And?"

She shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. "And suppose that in one of those dimensions, that alternate 'you' is an actor; an actor who in their career has played those other 'yous' as characters in film."

The other brow quickly joined its brother in height. The Doctor's brown eyes brightened with fascination. "You met other versions of you, Rose?"

It was nice to see him so excited—but he loved the new and unexplored. She hesitated, a mix of panic and relief robbing her of her voice momentarily: panic because she hadn't thought of _herself_ at all with what she'd just said, and relief because he obviously _had_. "Yeah," she finally lied.

She wasn't going to tell him. She decided that right then and there—wasn't going to tell him of the dozen different universes where, somehow, she had met men who had all shared the Doctor's face. Some English, some Scottish, one even American. But all had his pale skin, faint freckles, and eyes, but all with utterly different lives. She had been alternately amazed and angered by the happenstances of those men—why was it that Fate wanted to taunt her with the ghost of the Doctor, when she was trying so hard to find _him_? None of those men could compare to her Doctor, the Time Lord living the extraordinary life of a time traveler.

And then she had happened to stumble into a remarkable universe, one that had momentarily banished her single-minded drive to find her home universe from which she had been ripped. She had come from a universe with a Doctor doppelganger, a young DI by the name of Carlisle, when she had found herself in a cold blistery English day on a quiet street—and after a half-hour there, had happened to come across yet another duplicate of the Doctor dressed in non-decrepit clothes and hat—and oddly enough had a long plait down his back. It had been him this time who had called her out, calling her 'Billie' before realizing his mistake.

He was Scottish, and in the few minutes she spoke with him, she realized that this doppelganger was an actor—an actor who had over the course of his career played every single other duplicate Doctor she had met. Including the Doctor himself. He had laughed when she brought up the plait. "A play," he had explained with the faintly exasperated humor of having to explain for perhaps the millionth time. He had seemed polite and funny, but the revelation of his being an actor had distracted her a lot and started her thinking, and had left that universe fairly quickly. She never did discover his name.

"I was just wondering, though," she continued hastily, "that that universe with the actor 'you'…couldn't that be an original universe—like it could be the dimension that started all the others?"

"You're worried that you're merely an off-shoot of another 'you'?"

She shrugged. "Just curious."

He was definitely excited by the idea. "Never thought about it," he admitted. "But there was an old legend we knew on Gallifrey… the One Universe."

"And what was that?"

He 'tsk'ed thoughtfully. "It was just an old myth, and no one ever managed to find it if it did exist… but it was said that the entirety of creation started in one dimension. That was it. No other dimensions, no alternate 'yous'. Then the actions of that original universe created off-shoots, which became those other dimensions, those other 'yous'." He smiled. "The One Universe… I wonder if it was really that."

There was something suddenly sad in his voice, like he didn't know who he could tell who would truly appreciate the discovery of the old myth he had grown up with.

She looked at him again. "I dunno… but it definitely made me rethink that old saying 'All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.'"


End file.
